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YASMIN ÁKSU
(sometimes videos) of authentic conversations® in different contexts, like
schools and classrooms, companies, hospitals, doctors’ offices, law offices, or
even family dinner tables, aiming to identify communicative tasks and forms
and functions of micro behavior.’
For this purpose, the transcripts are extremely detailed, including short
pauses and lexicalized and non-lexicalized discourse particles like “also”
(“well”), filling activity like “ähm” (“erm”), tag elements like “oder?” (“right?”),
backchanneling (listener responses) like “hmhm”, turn-claiming behavior like
“ja ja, verstehe” (“yeah yeah, I see”) as well as interruptions and break-offs,
corrections, simultaneous speaking etc. Communication in general is seen as
characterized by its constitutivity (meaning that communication is interactively
constituted), interactivity (meaning that the participants continuously
coordinate their contributions and perspectives), processuality (meaning
communication evolves over time, with the exact outcome not known from
the start), pragmaticity (meaning the participants interactively work on their
shared and individual goals) and methodicity (meaning the participants apply
socio-culturally shared practices).'° Thus, CA is able to track how interactants
shape their respective roles and their social world.
THE DATA BASE
In order to close the above-mentioned gap, I compiled a corpus of 14 one¬
on-one supervision sessions audio-recorded in 2010/2011 as a data base for a
PhD thesis in linguistics. This corpus comprises four supervision processes
conducted by two female supervisors with two and three different clients
respectively. Until now, it is the only German-language corpus of one-on-one
supervision audio records (not least because it is immensely difficult to gain
the consent of all the participants in this sensitive field).
696-735.; for a detailed account of the development of CA see Paul Drew — John Heritage, Talk
at work, Interaction in institutional settings, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
This means conversations which would have taken place in any case and have not been set up
for the sake of being recorded for a research project.
For descriptions of the background and program of CA see Drew — Heritage, Talk at work; Jorg
Bergmann, Das Konzept der Konversationsanalyse, in Klaus Brinker — Gerd Antos — Wolfgang
Heinemann — Sven F. Sager (eds.), Text- und Gesprächslinguistik, Vol. 2, Berlin, Mouton de
Gruyter, 2001, 919—926.; Klaus Brinker, — Sven F. Sager, Linguistische Gesprächsanalyse, Eine
Einführung, Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag, Grundlagen der Germanistik, 2010.
Arnulf Deppermann, Gespräche analysieren, Eine Einführung, Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, Qualitative Sozialforschung, 2008.
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